1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

3. People that believe in a good God spend way more time thinking on an evil God. Specially modern Christian religions seem to be founded either on Satan or the Apocalypse, bad entity and bad events.

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

Atheists are negative believers, it's the very definition of atheism: one which rejects the existence of a higher power, deity, God, etc... were you thinking of agnosticism? There is an important difference. So obviously atheists are going to come up with ideas to disprove the existence of God for the exact same reasons that believers are going to come up with ideas to prove the existence of God, in endless debates and heated discussions, yet never truly reaching one another.

The slowsort algorithm is a perfect illustration of the multiply and surrender paradigm, which is perhaps the single most important paradigm in the development of reluctant algorithms. The basic multiply and surrender strategy consists in replacing the problem at hand by two or more subproblems, each slightly simpler than the original, and continue multiplying subproblems and subsubproblems recursively in this fashion as long as possible. At some point the subproblems will all become so simple that their solution can no longer be postponed, and we will have to surrender. Experience shows that, in most cases, by the time this point is reached the total work will be substantially higher than what could have been wasted by a more direct approach.

I'm proud of gamedev for making it this far without descending into a flame war

Personally I am atheist I was very religous up until about 10, around that age I started to question things but held on to the belief because I wanted to and rationalized my decision despite how rediculous it seemed to me by telling myself "Well doctors and scientists and other people who are much smarter than a 10 year old kid believe in god, so they're probably right." At the time I didn't know how many scientists were atheist.

I usually avoid all discussion of religon because I just don't care enough, but everyone seems to be pretty civil here so what the hell.

Sometimes I consider myself agnostic, just because of the fact that I'm aware that I have less than 1% of the knowledge required to make such a claim as that there is/isn't a god. I guess technically I am agnostic because I don't deny that gods existence is possible, how the hell would I know? But I usually just say I'm athiest because the people I'm talking to will interpret that closer to my actual beliefs than if I told them I was agnostic

I normally don't like writing much about this topic on the internet, and personally find it kind of awkward, but oh well.

when I was younger, I was more like "don't know, don't care", neither leaning strongly towards belief or disbelief in these areas.

did note eventually that I cared some about morals though, not so much arguing specifics, but more sort of a general "there is a right, there is a wrong, people should do things that are right and avoid doing things that are wrong" sense (which generally aligned pretty well with traditional views).

eventually started looking into religions some, more or less all of them at once, stumbled into some areas which sort of "went terribly wrong".

initially I saw it more as an information-gathering and experimentation exercise, trying to resolve first-hand "what was the case", and "stuff got scary".

ended up going with Christianity (more specific "generic non-denominational Protestantism, I guess"), as it best matched my general beliefs and existing general moral beliefs, and with the various possibilities was generally the "safest bet".

like, while it is hard to really be certain what is correct, it is at least easier to rule out what is "most likely not correct" (basically, all the obviously "weird" stuff...). even within the landscape that is "Christendom" there are things that basically scare me off (like, I find that I prefer to stay well clear of people like Charismatics and Pentecostals, as it looks a bit too much like the things that scared me away from the other religions...).

I still seem to float sometimes between "believing with a sense of conviction" and "hell if I know".

and, sometimes floating around in the area that is morals and doctrine, sometimes seeing it from inside the system, and sometimes externally as if it were all a big system (more similar to how one sees things like code and file-formats, like as a big collection of information, largely itself isolated from whether or not it is "real"). sometimes "getting into it" and other times "burning out on it".

like, my natural "reality" is not based on absolutes, but rather seemingly a big network of various pieces of information, and it is hard to really have any conviction that anything in particular is "fact" (more "seems most likely the case at the moment").

then I am left to realize if I look "outwards", my external reality then becomes more about responding to whatever comes up, when it comes up, often as it is seen via the lens of whatever seems right or wrong or good/bad, and finding that often my personal beliefs about the greater universe have little bearing in an immediate sense, vs seeing the "here and now" mixed with responding to various people and the events in their lives (people doing good and bad things, and good and bad results coming to them resulting from their actions, ...). (*4)

and, while a person can go and engage in bad behavior, often all it will do is bring bad results, and I am left to think "how can it be good for people to promote or try to justify behaviors which seemingly do little beyond bring bad consequences on those who do them?...". (like, even ignoring the "greater truths", there is such a thing as a self-destructive lifestyle... and things that may come back to bite one later...).

(like "greater reality" vs "does it effect what I am doing right now?" or "can I eat it?" or similar...).

*4: don't need supernatural explanations or "crazy rules" here, consequences of actions will typically come on their own, much like heavy smoking and drinking leading to health problems (like, it doesn't seem like such a strange thing to assert that if a person "parties hard" on a regular basis, sleeps around with whoever comes along, ... then consequences may come along as a result... and they will have no one to blame but themselves...). like, using some discretion "just makes sense" IMO.

nevermind an of mine absence of much ability to really come up with any satisfactory answer on morals:

the more conventional moral-language explanations tend to not make much of any real sense to me personally (*1);

my personal attempts to come up with systematic explanations are "weak" and don't usually go over well if I try to explain them (can be explained as "philosophical language word soup", "an informal set of algorithms", or by comparing it to traditional economics and accounting theory, *2).

*2: "egoistic pragmatic utilitarianism" was one term used to describe it (as a meta-ethical model, basically avoiding the traditional problems/instabilities of more traditional "altruistic utilitarianism" by assuming that each actor in the system evaluates the model individually and from the perspective of maximizing their own personal benefits from relationships and interactions with other). alternatively it could be compared with classical economics with elements of accounting thrown in. it seemed to sort of work (as an predictive model), but tends to go over "like a lead brick".

*1: it is sad when trying to read this stuff almost wish they were rather reading a EULA or something...

(luckily, at least doctrine tends to be a little better in the "at least it basically makes sense" thing...).

then, there is all the stuff which seemingly goes beyond my abilities to really understand, ... ("meta" stuff...).

sometimes this then gets worrying, like maybe I "should" understand a lot more of this stuff, but ultimately I don't, and for better or worse, I am limited to what sorts of stuff I understand.

but, what stuff I do understand, can basically be taken at face value.

sort of like, I don't really understand math that well either, but to what extent it is relevant to the task at hand, it can be used...

like, if you know the basic behavior of various operators, and how to do basic algebra-type stuff, good enough (it is rare to see a problem that goes much beyond the capabilities of high-school level algebra), and my seeming inability to make any real sense of what a "set" actually is or what it does or how it works, has rarely effected much...

(sort of like trying to make sense of the whole "love" thing, both in the religious and interpersonal relationships sense...).

then on the other side of the debate, there is lots of people who seem to have little better to do than sling insults or assume that "Christian"=="Young Earth Creationist" or similar (when not everyone is a YEC, like, some of us more lean towards things like "guided evolution" and similar), or people claim that all religious people hate science, or whatever...

sadly, to some extent it mostly boils down to "cross ones' fingers and hope for a good outcome"...

yeah, hardly a shining example of piety it seems...

but, if a person can accept things like the Nicene Creed and similar at face value, maybe it is at least a starting point...

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere.

Welcome to Fermi's paradox.

possibly, but there is another factor:

as-is, at present, most of this "everywhere" is very far away, and thus any alien life can't be confirmed or denied (via observation).

(ignoring claims of UFOs and conspiracy theories and so on...).

more likely it is identifying if anything is alive on other planets around in this solar system (microbes, ...), and if some more distant planet has lots of critters (or a civilization), there isn't really any good way to know.

however, whether or not this life exists may not say that much, since there isn't much to say life *doesn't* exist elsewhere, and otherwise it may boil down largely to a probabilities game (as-in, if the chances of complex life existing is statistically rare, so chance encounters are uncommon or unlikely...).

though, it has turned out that apparently planets are pretty common at least, so there is at least this is a starting point...

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

I don't believe in a personified god, but I'm willing to believe in aliens. I haven't seen any, and I'd wager they're EXTREMELY far away, but I can't say with conviction whether they exist or not.

Humans have had a strong tendency (which appears to be questioned more and more recently) to believe themselves unique and special as intelligent life forms. I think that's pretty pretentious, especially considering how common malfunctioning brains are these days.

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers.

Atheists are negative believers, it's the very definition of atheism: one which rejects the existence of a higher power, deity, God, etc...

You're both confusing atheism with anti-theism. Atheists say there is no evidence for gods so there's no point in believing in them. Anti-theists say they believe there aren't any gods despite not having any proof.

No gods for me. I find the idea of a god really, reeeaaaaally ridiculous. Specially the one of a god that watches over us, that loves us, cares for all of us, and bla bla bla. It's just something that seems so out of touch with everything. It's like an insta-rationalization machine.

I was never able to relate with such things.

same here. Grew up in a protestant family in Italy (that makes them pretty serious about religion because it's a minority).. was intrigued by the question during my early teen years but then quickly became annoyed by it.. It's still beyond me how supposed logical people involved in things like software developing can consider something like believing in holy ghosts and spirits seriously.. but hey, that's the world we live in, hopefully it'll get better.

I've been raised semi-catholic. Meaning I was baptized at the age of 6 because the priest refused to do it when I was born, since my mother wasn't a virgin when she married.

Tell me about zealots.

Now, that other priest was shocked that my soul would be lost (eh?), so insisted in doing it anyway when I was 6. It's beyond my comprehension why God would care whether some presumed pedophile pours water over your head or not, or how doing such can prevent your soul from getting lost (where would I lose it anyway?). Either God exists and loves us all, or it doesn't exist, then the water won't do any good either. Makes you wonder what happens to children who die during birth.

Unsurprisingly, my parents taught me the religious stuff without putting much effort into the having-to-believe part and without putting any effort into the being-hypocrite-on-sunday part. We had religion in school, and I did all that church stuff you're supposed to do as a child to become a good christian.

In summary, I'm not opposed to the idea of "God" or the idea of "some god" for that matter. In fact, while I sincerely hope that there is one (because obviously I'll die some day), I do have difficulties believing that there is a god in this world, or a god that cares for that matter. With so much evil, it's hard to believe there is a good force overlooking and guiding us. You'd think God would eventually crush the pharisees, but this hasn't happened in several thousand years.

I'm OK with people "doing religion" (even though I perceive that as somewhat naive), as long as they leave me alone with their ideas and values. It's their decision what they do in their free time. Unfortunately, most of the time they don't leave you alone.

Besides, I do consider "god" and "religion" two entirely separate things. Religion is a system conceived by vicious people to suppress the simple-minded and to exploit man's natural fear of death and oblivion. It has nothing to do with a god or that god's will, even though the priest will tell you so.

Religion is a service contract that you pay for, which you can neither verify nor enforce. They tell you that if you do your prayers and behave, and if you regularly pay money to the priest (so the priest can live in luxury and doesn't need to work), then God will give you the afterlife when you die. Except there is no way of knowing, and if it turns out to be a false promise, there's nothing you can do about it any more. The church has been successful with this con for 2000 years.

It's no coincidence that in every medieval painting, the peasant was depicted as a starving leper and the priest was always the guy with chubby cheek and a bottle of wine in one hand, and a leg of mutton in the other. The pope would be eating from golden plates, none less pompous than the king's. Love thy next, truly. Care for the needy.

In my experience, the most religious people are usually the most vicious, too. And no, I'm not talking of muslim terrorists (though they, too, are a good example of the evil that religion is doing).

I've seen people, and not just once, who go to church every sunday and sing their chorals and appear as "good christians", except... well except when they should be good christians. The same people who are so chaste and pious will fuck their secretary at work and beat their step-daughter. The same people who sing in church will conspire against other people (who are their next in church) and give wrong testimony just to get a promotion in their stead. The same people who preach generosity will steal from others (e.g. cheat on social security) and not even feel guilty about it. The same people who preach love-thy-next will buy cheap products which are made from exploiting Black Man in Africa and will buy bottled water stolen from the same people. Of course those are just Africans, so they don't count, do they.

The same people who "love their next" will shun their next if he believes in the wrong god (or in the same god, but with a slightly different interpretation).

I'm not even talking about people who should really know better, such as pedophile priests (which isn't a very singular thing) or bishops who spend upwards of 30 million of euros of money designated to feed the needy for their own private residence. But hey, who gives a f... about the needy.

And don't get me started on the Bible, or the "word of God" as it's usually called. The word of God, assuming there is one, couldn't be any more remote than from what's written in the Bible. Plus, the zealots will take the Bible literally when it fits their purpose, and claim that it needs "interpretation" otherwise. Twist it any way you like, yay.

As to me In general I am lacking of religious and spiritual experiences (sadly) i am working to much, and even if I am resting i do it dumb way. Now at 35 I am living mostly in human populated hell, I see how much harm and misery Is done to people (for example by simpletonic money making hellish lawyers and simpletonic money making hellish doctors), I got personally terrible health problems too and i am victim of hellish lawyers/administration and hellish medicine men (and women too).

So I got a lot of such kind experiences related to humanitarizm or something like that but this is al civil and not spiritual ' It sounds to me like I would be existentialist like camus or sartre here but maybe this is only a matter of bad mood probably. As to God it is hard to say, I was sent as a kid to catholic church and influenced me somewhat, some elements of this (related to righteousness and so) make much sense for me.

I am an agnostic but I often take the atheist stand because internet is full of people trying to project their religion unto others and this force needs to be negated by people that are able to and bother. If I encounter any religious propaganda on the part of internet I cover I will reply with equal force against it and there's no blaming me for the discussion that results in.

But I'd rather skip the theme entirely because it doesn't belong here or much elsewhere. People gather here to discuss game development and it makes sense strengthen the community spirit rather than to divide them on arbitrary basis such as religious views.

The definition of god itself as an entity who doesn't show itself anyway but is omnipotent doesn't make much sense to me. Even less sense makes that some consider it a virtue to believe in something that doesn't matter until supposedly after you die. Still even less sense makes to make other people suffer based on something someone else has deducted from some ancient text. And the latest is what I oppose the most in what religion still does today.

Religion hasn't done much harm to me but it has to a whole lot of people, even entire nations. As someone's signature said, scientists never killed priests but priests have killed scientists. (Or something along those lines.)

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

1. Because there are theists spreading their religion (and this obviously works), there must be atheists stopping the progress, otherwise bible would become the biggest authority and we'd regress back to the middle age level where people are slain for opposing it or fight world war III with Christianity vs Islam or something as meaningful.

2. No you mustn't. You can consider only one of this incredibly rare occurrences happens to be currently taking place in this time and space considering the relativity of them. If you haven't stumbled on a person who doesn't believe in god but believe in aliens (it's better to call it extraterrestrial life even though that term is still debatable as well) you can't have covered too much ground. Most of people in Christianity dominating countries who believe in extraterrestrial life don't believe in god because extraterrestrial life is incompatible with Christianity.

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

I suppose it gives them something to do, likely you will see arguments from both sides being something relayed by some famous atheist / theist, personally despite my bad experiences with religion I don't care what people believe, if it isn't religion it's conspiracy theorist spewing crap. If it affected me I would care and despite UK being a partially secular state, policy makers are subtly shutdown if they even attempt to argue for / against on the grounds purely on religion. This was something heavily witnessed during the gay marriage debates and I am glad the religious arguments were put aside, instead real concerns were discussed.

My point really is, you can be a believer of any mythology / conspiracy whether modern or ancient, it isn't really a problem as it is up to the individual on how they will live their life based on that belief. Once you start having mythology dictate your policies things go wrong simply because there is no room for reforming religious 'laws', fortunately we are seeing this less and less these days and more and more states are preferring the pragmatic approach to policy making than the "lets do this because this vague passage in a holy book might mean it".

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

Considering how large this universe is and how much we don't know about it, it wouldn't be wrong to say that there is other life, I am not sure who you are speaking to but I doubt many people who believe in God believe there is other life, historically for centuries people even believed the universe revolved around earth and due to the self-centred close minded nature of religion, the church didn't even question it. Not to mention the fact that for centuries people assumed the Earth was flat, you would think with all these magical miracles that have so called happened you would have just once some angel, demon, witch, wizard etc. show up and say "umm guys, I hate to break it to you but the Earth is not flat and the universe doesn't revolve around Earth".

Just look at how long it took people to understand gravity, electricity or thermodynamics, yet somehow religion still claims it is 'right' and should be followed. When it comes to religion, you just need history alone to prove how bad religion has been for us. Saying that if a person wishes to believe their religion as long as it doesn't affect me I don't care, I think in the west at least we are past the point where religion can do anymore harm

But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens

huh?

I think any person who can add will easily come to the conclusion that the chances for life in the universe literally endless.

But if by aliens you mean those funny stories on history channel then you are probably right.. atheist generally dont follow that kind of bandwagon.

I think a lot of the aliens on History Channel stuff can mostly be discounted as "crazy New-Age stuff..." (*1).

probably not many people (religious or otherwise) actually believe it.

they also have a bad habit of basically crapping on whatever they talk about, like interviewing people who are like "we will just pull crap on various subjects and throw it at the camera". yeah... seems credible...

*1: and, meanwhile new-age people have a bad habit of fouling up whatever they get their hands on, like take bits and pieces of science and bits and pieces of various religions and glue magic crystals and aliens and dolphins and whatever else onto it (because, you know, "quantum" means "magic", right?... it is like science, but bedazzled...).

then they make everyone else look bad in the off chance that their versions are mistaken to actually represent whatever topic they are going on about.

This is what everybody needs to understand. God has nothing to do with religions: Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, your own, or your next-door priest's. I always bring this up whenever I am in discussions with friends who are conflicted with their faith. It seems that their flawed logic starts from religions.

"Religions are bad because they divide and create war. Since Religions worship God, and that God should be all-loving, therefore, God does not exist because war is not loving"

I iterate so many times that religions are run by people, just like corporations and governments. Anything run by people are prone to corruption. The fact that religion X wages war all the time, or corrupt from the inside, tells nothing about God, or God's existence. You are talking about people who are taking advantage of the powerful things that are religions for their own benefits.

People will use anything to create separation, gain power, and hurt other people in the process. If there were no religions, they will use other excuses: skin-color, nationality, ideology, politics, their lands, their lambs, sexes, what color should they use for walls, C# vs C++, and all ridiculous things will create tensions and conflicts. It doesn't matter. That is the very nature of human beings: to be different, to question existing systems, and to rebel.

These natures, which may sound very damaging and why would God (if God exists and is responsible for why we were created this way) do this to us, may actually have some benefits. To allow us to rebel would prevent us from being under control of some oppresive forces (whether that's a corrupt government or demons). To allow us to be different creates diversities, and diversities is a good thing.

It is theoretically possible for human beings to coexists together under different beliefs and ideologies, unfortunately greed, jealousy, and lies come into play and wreak havoc in everything. This is what Christianity/Catholocism (even though it's not perfect itself) trying to teach to its members: to love one another, so that none of these would have happened.

unfortunately greed, jealousy, and lies come into play and wreak havoc in everything

I think a slight difference between the needs and interests of people are enough wreak havoc. Even if we take all the "bad" things from the human nature, individuals will get into conflicts even with the best intentions. That's why I think possession is a good thing, and that there won't be world piece without strong controlling power(s) with all its trade-offs (I'm talking about practical things, like a government, not God) or a much more sparse distribution of humans. Or some global heroine-like drug, or Matrix.

It is theoretically possible for human beings to coexists together under different beliefs and ideologies, unfortunately greed, jealousy, and lies come into play and wreak havoc in everything. This is what Christianity/Catholocism (even though it's not perfect itself) trying to teach to its members: to love one another, so that none of these would have happened.

although, even then, there is also a fair amount of fragmentation in terms of beliefs as well.

like, people try to get along, despite there being a lot of disagreement over lots of different things, and what is a Christian to one person may be a very different thing to someone else, ...

but, from the view of the outside, most of the bad points of most of the groups are sort of rolled together into a generic media stereotype.

but, ultimately a lot of this is also a good reason why not to have any centralized authorities in these matters.

better is if pretty much everyone is free to disagree, and things can generally be kept civil.

but, ultimately, many people try to form central authorities, and this is where problems arise, and typically the bigger or more influential the authority, the worse its problems and abuses become (ex: state religions and cults).

1. Why atheists spend so much time coming up with ideas to disprove the existence of God? That actually transform them into negative believers. If God exists or not there is no need for believers or anti-believers, we don't matter.

If "god" (by whatever definition you want to apply to that) does exist, he has no meaningful interaction with our daily lives. His fan club, OTOH, do.

Some atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al) feel that the world would be a better place without religion and attack the root cause of religion, belief in god. The reasoning goes if you disprove god, then religion goes away and with it, fundamentalism, attacks on science, etc.

Personally, I'm not sure about this. People who are idiots (creationists) or people who have been oppressed and manipulated for political gain (jihadis) will simply find some other reason to do whatever it is they do.

That said, I am thankful that Dawkins and his ilk exist. They serve as an important counter-balance to the religious crazies. It's just unfortunate that religious fundamentalists tend to occupy positions of power (Ayatollahs, the Tea Party), while "rationalist fundamentalists" are marginalised and ignored.

Besides "is there a god" is a fundamentally interesting question. Religion, for good or evil, has had a massive influence on our society and culture. Even Dawkins advocates teaching the bible in schools, simply because you can't understand many great cultural works without it.

2. If God doesn't exist you must highly consider life to be automatically generated in the universe. The universe is homogenous, the same events repeat everywhere, so you should have life everywhere. But I haven't found a person that doesn't believe in God that still believes in aliens, instead most of the people that believe in God also believe in the contrary solution for life as well.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "aliens". If you mean "life on other planets", I think you'll find that most atheists would quite happily say that not only is it possible, it's highly likely.

OTOH, if you mean little grey men and government conspiracies, that seems less likely for several reasons:

2. If you did spend all that time and effort to come visit, why would you be subtle about it? Unless you were doing some kind of Star Trek Prime Directive cultural observation, in which case, if you wanted to stay hidden, your tech would allow you to do that.

if you think programming is like sex, you probably haven't done much of either.-------------- - capn_midnight

Well, it depends on what you mean by "aliens". If you mean "life on other planets", I think you'll find that most atheists would quite happily say that not only is it possible, it's highly likely. OTOH, if you mean little grey men and government conspiracies, that seems less likely for several reasons:

Also, I find it quite funny how many times these aliens look more human than the species closest to humans on earth. As if evolution universally converged on the same form.